Willo O'Brien

I couldn’t believe how excited I was walking to my polling place today. It didn’t hit me until I officially sat down and wrote out my final selections (my cheat sheet), put them in my book (to read in case the lines were as insane as I’ve been hearing they are) and set out to make my mark in history.

We have a ton of props here in California so it was cool to read through all those and take a stance.

Most importantly, of course, I hope Kerry kicks Bush OUT OUT OUT!!!!!

*crossing fingers & toes*

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This is pretty intense.

Darren (boykani.com) & I have been saying we’re going to do some silkscreening for awhile now – and yesterday we finally had a date set to do it!

It was a first for both of us, so although they didn’t turn out as good as we may have wanted, we learned a lot and had a good time hangin out.

A few photos from the silkscreening process are posted here.

It was rad rappin w/ him about painting and we both are way into artists like Tiffany Bozic, Sam Flores, etc. Darren has actually turned me on to a lot of art and techniques. I’m stoked to have him as a creative buddy!

I got to check out some of the sweet books he has (and I have wanted!) like Pictoplasma, and we even watched the Fifty24SF Dithers DVD that I’ve been wanting to see while we were doing our first step of the silkscreen painting.

Darren also has a button maker that I’m jealous of and will probably buy myself one for Christmas. The whole day was rad. Or as Darren would say: Siiiiiiiick. ;)

Rick & I went as Rock N Roll Sushi (it’s a roll made with Avocado & Unagi/BBQ Sea Eel and it’s really good!) plus, we love the Rock n Roll :)

So Step 1 was making the costumes, which took WAY longer than we expected! We went to Good Will, then a fabric store and to another store for the packing peanuts and then finally came back here around 4 to start our project. Lots of sewing and glue gunning later, while watching a couple episodes of TIVO’d South Park, we had our costumes *finally* done!!! Due to our project taking way longer than we thought we broke out some tasty gin gimlets here while getting ready, which was a good move because by the time we got ready, stopped by Rick’s and then headed over to our first party it was midnight!! haha!

We tried to hit my friend Trina’s party, but sadly were too late and nobody was home! whoops!! So we headed over to the Rickshaw Stop for Fallout and danced to some great 80’s music and ran into Anthony (of the band Loquat) who I was stoked to finally meet in person.

After closing down the bar there, we followed Thing 1 & Thing 2 to a party in the mission where Bruno & Talia met up w/ us. We left around 3:30 (4:30 w/o the time change!) and went for some grub at the open-all-night Bagdad Cafe, since we really hadn’t had dinner & we were starving! It was a SUPER fun night!!!

View All Photos from Halloween 2004. Warning: Fotki is being finiky today so you can either try refreshing if you get the 503 error, or just check em out later today.

P.S. Here’s the pre-costume sketch I had done:

Last Monday (10/25/04) Jem & I went to Interpol. Openers: Hail Social and Secret Machines.

Hail Social was pretty good! Boys from Philly, humble, good indie sound.

I like the Secret Machines (CD) and was actually really looking forward to seeing them because I’ve been enjoying the CD so much – but I thought they were totally just “pleasing themselves” up there going on & on… Their set made me antsy and I just wanted them to speed up or get on with it or something. I was annoyed they weren’t as good as the album for me. So ya, I think it had to do with their jamming out with themselves that made me want to scream “Your not Interpol yet – you’re here to rock us now get on with it!!!”

Interpol, on the other hand, was AWESOME. Way better than I could have hoped even!! I thought I was only going to last 2 songs in that insane people crush where I was getting touched by strangers on every side and having to touch parts of them against my will!!! But then somehow the music started and I couldn’t leave! We ended up staying down there for the whole show.

Oh, and for the record, I heart Interpol’s guitarist, Daniel Kessler. Something about him is SO HOT.

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Thursday night (10/28/04) we hit The Husbands, Mr. Airplane Man & Holly GoLightly at Bottom of the Hill. “We” was me, Rick, Jem, Mike, Lyne, Jim and even Hai was there! (actually I ran into about 3 other people I knew too, including a Pat from Rogue Wave sighting! :)

The Husbands annoyed the sh*t out of me. I liked them the first time we saw them, but this time she was smacking her gum and it was driving me crazy. Like her missing tooth isn’t enough of a distraction when watching her sing – nobody should chew gum & sing in front of an audience! You’re guaranteed to be grossing out at least 65% of us. Her backup singers (especially one of them) look like they had lobotomies and they’re up their clapping and singing and it’s all they can do to remember their big “oohs & la la la” parts while they look out at the audience like brainless zombies. I had to close my eyes to enjoy them… and the only cool part was when the organ/piano player from Harold Ray got up there & danced around with his toy piano.

Mr. Airplane Man was great!!! Unfortunately Rick left by that time to hit Metric at GAMH, so I think I was a little sad about that, and misplaced after being up front I couldn’t hear her vocals – so then I moved and was getting that “your head is in my way b*tch” vibe from someone I was standing in front of – so needless to say I was a tad distracted during it all. But I ended up settling in next to Jim 1/2 way through and thoroughly enjoyed their last couple songs. They played a short set (unfortunately!) but they were awesome live! It’s just 2 girls!! I thought for sure there’d be more of them and I kinda wish there had been just for energy – but they were great. I love their songs!! And live they lived up to every bit of their CD. I just wish they’d played longer!!

Holly GoLightly was fun! My friend Lyne is a big fan and she was right, I enjoyed their set! The lead singer is English and she was very cute – and they had a stand up bass, a keyboardist, 2 guitars and drummer. Great energy and the crowd loved their garage/jazz/blues/swingy beats.

I left around 12:15 tired and ready for bed… but hilariously ran into some people outside and we all ended up deciding to go to Thee Parkside for a drink. Crazy kids!

We walked in for the last band to go on & they gave us 2 for 1. We wouldn’t even have gone in at this point due to having to pay another cover, but because I was absolutely FREEZING I insisted I couldn’t bear to walk back the couple blocks to my car w/o having 1 beer here to warm up. So that’s what we did :)

We ended up showing up for the last band: Armitage Shanks – and they were GREAT! I just realized they played w/ Operation S the following night at the Hemlock. I was stoked to have stumbled upon them. They have a really fun garage/uk punk sound and we all danced around and enjoyed warming up over a few more beers before calling it a night. Nice meeting you guys!

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Photos from the Interpol show & the Mr. Airplane Man / Holly GoLightly show are posted here – but I’ll warn you Fotki is being finiky today so you can either try refreshing if you get the 503 error, or just check em out later today.

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Friday night Rick & I met up for Happy Hour at the Hotel Utah with some people from his company before heading out for a double header at Cafe du Nord.

We stopped off for a quick bite at Home, which we’ve been wanting to try. It was tasty!! Over dinner we got in a “heated discussion” about the difference between Voltron and Wonder-Twin Powers Activate. :) We also ran into my old friends Michelle, Ewa and Bridgette!

The night began upstairs at Swedish American Hall for Two Gallants. They were good, he’s got such a unique voice and their songs are so amazing – total stories, but they feel like they’re stories that happened back in the 1890’s or something.

Next up was Britt Daniels (of Spoon), who was great as always and got the sleepy Swedish American Hall crowd clapping and calling out requests.

We headed downstairs for an awesome set of Robbers on High Street. I love these guys!! Their excellent live and we’ve had their Fine Lines EP for a couple months now and have really gotten into them.

I think they sound a ton like a cross between Spoon and On The Speakers, but I hate comparing as they’ve got their own deal goin on for sure because they’re all very solid musicians that write great songs. Love them! Rick & both nabbed a t-shirt afterwards and rapped w/ the lead singer who (in reply to my question) reported they will have a full length out in January! woohoo!

We caught a teeny bit of Monolith, but didn’t pay much attention for me to give any kind of review – but I’d like to hear their CD as it certainly didn’t sound bad!

Closing the night was John Vanderslice who I was really stoked to see live finally after only getting a peek of him at SXSW. He was good, but I think we were more in the mood to see the pacings of Robbers on High Street at that point. Plus I was pretty tired from partyin the night before, and both Rick & I were feelin the long night in our legs (his more from running 20 some miles this week, me just cuz I am OLD! :) So we left before Vanderslice was done – but overall we had a fun night of shows!!!

Lunar eclipse tonite!!! Check out info & details here on Nasa’s site.

Our morning at the San Jose Art Museum was fabulous!! When we arrived we found free weekend parking, and the museum admission was free too! woohoo! It felt like they knew we were coming and it was their gift. ha!

The Nara exhibit was magnificent!! Big huge painted discs (like teacup saucers, but we’re talking 10’x10′ or so) on the walls, fiberglass heads and the big dog!!! I wish I could have taken a gazillion photos of it all. They had sketches of his in one room, and even a slideshow of his studio, with a boombox playing all the music that inspires him with stacks of cd’s next to it. So cool! We were psyched when we heard Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her played twice while we were roaming around.

We were up there a long time though because we sat down and looked at quite a few zines at the tables they had set up for the Art of Zine 04 exhibit in the next room. I found some very cool zines and enjoyed looking through probably about 20 different ones out of the 200-300? that they had there on display. Very cool to bring the awareness of the underground/DIY zine scene to the mainstream. (aaww yaa, that rhymed)

p.s. Jem went later that day on her own, and commented on also loving one of my favorite parts of the museum show was some artist had done these big frosted circus animal cookies all over one wall, with a black sheep in the middle. That was great (I love those cookies!!).

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Afterwards we tried to go to what Rick claims to be the best Indian Buffet in the Silicon Valley, but sadly we got there just after their lunch time, and they were closed till dinner! So we went to downtown Mountain View and ate at Pho Hoa. I had Pho for the first time!! It was super yum!!! And perfect for the cold rainy day. I also had Vietnamese iced coffee for the first time and I LOVE IT!! Creamy delish!

We wandered around a bookstore before coming home to take a nap. It was a lovely day!!!

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We’d planned to do some of our creative work in a cafe somewhere afterwards, but we were pooped (hence the nap). However, the inspiration was still burbling inside me, so before I knew it I was cultivating canvases (hech hemm, doodling on bar napkins) at the Mile High Club all night! Here are some of those doodles:

Rick insisted on this one I try to buff up his muscles :) I told him he looks like a T-Bird (from Grease). He complained about his scrawny legs, too – but I explained that bigger ones would only make him look fat or like a meathead, and then delightfully made mine super skinny to offset his :) That’s the best part about toons – it’s not reality!!!

Rick gives me ideas for what to draw. This was “Draw a monkey with an 8-pack”.

Colin looks great on stage.

I just felt a mini earthquake!

update: 3.8 in Gilroy

Other Earthquake sites to hit if you feel one.

Thu 10/21 – PJ Harvey was great… I have had PJ’s stuff but never been a devout follower like some… but I’ve really enjoyed her newest, Uh-Huh Her, and so I was looking forward to seeing her live. I was even expecting to walk away loving her more than ever before, but instead I think I realized that as much as I love her dark sound, there’s something missing in there for me and it doesn’t totally sweep me away like I thought it might. Still, seeing her was awesome, and her dress was incredible!!! :) Can anyone describe or share photos of her Friday night garb? We also loved how the guitarist used up every bit of that big stage they’d created – and I loved the double drums!

UPDATE: PJ Harvey Photo Album

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Fri 10/22

We went to Canto do Brazil for dinner & then hit Shaun of the Dead which is a very funny, twisted movie.

Sat 10/23

Sat night we headed over to the East Bay (and I didn’t spontaneously combust!!! huzzah!) to the Mile High Club (our first time!) for Hijack the Disco, Yellow Press & Ex-Boyfriends. We enjoyed some tasty Fat Tires at the bar first (favorite beer of the moment) and split a yummy cheeseburger & tator tots. Any place that serves tator tots scores 5 extra points in my book!

I’d been wanting to check out Hijack the Disco since I’d downloaded a few of their MP3’s awhile back and everytime they come on (via shuffle) I’m like “who is this?!” It’s really good and I think they’ll do well, check em out!

Yellow Press is always good in my opinion. I love the high energy and the punk rock screaming lyrics.

Ex-boyfriends didn’t have their bass player due to an unfortunate cat attack :) which is just so cute in itself! Peter was all trying to save the fighting cats and practically got maimed himself!! I’m sure it’d been a fuller sound w/ the bass & his vocals, but nobody noticed his absense more than the remaining band members Chriso & Colin, who made funny banter about not being sure how to start the songs w/o their trusty 3rd stooge. But I still thought they were great.. they have very danceable fun songs. Watch out Franz!!!! :)

Since that whole East Bay/having to drive thing cuts into my drinking plans we went back to the city & hit a friends place and really got the party started. It was a costume party and since we didn’t arrive till about 12:30am everyone was good & sauced. We mingled with the Devil, a Naughty Nurse, Bonnie & Clyde, Betty Crocker and a few other suspects till about 4am and called it a night.

I have some fun photos from these events that I’ll post later. Hope you all had a good weekend!

UPDATE: Photo’s from Saturday’s Adventures have been posted!!

By the way, you should definitely be listening to: The Concretes, The Arcade Fire, The Futureheads, A.C. Newman, The Secret Machines, and Rilo Kiley.

I could go on, but those will get you started for now.

Tonite we went to The Concretes at GAMH. And they were great!! They had these guys on the horns, that not only played Sax and Trumpet most of the time… but then they pulled out a tuba and a clarinet – AND a flute!! Wow! The drummer girl looked very swedish with her icy blond hair and she kept a very taught face while she drummed. The lead singer was sweet and wore blue from head to toe from her blue 70’s silk/polyester dress to her blue tights down to her blue pumps. Classy Blue Pumps.

An incredible orchestra of sound with 8 people on stage, making beautiful music. I really loved it.

Update: Photos posted